Dying is Harder
by minor-league-fangirl
Summary: Dying is just like falling asleep. You slip away. Unless you don't. Unless you have to wait for months. For Dean Winchester, watching his best friend wait may just be the hardest part of losing him. WARNING Major Character Death and Cursing


"Dean, what happens when I die?" Castiel asked the question bluntly, eyes on the ceiling, no quiver in his voice. After a moment of silence, he turned his face to where his best friend stood, grief and bit of horror carved into his forehead.

"How'm I s'posed t'know?" he mumbled, leaning against the window sill. He looked out and tried to say something. Something like "You aren't going to die". But that wasn't quite true.

Already, Castiel was dangerously thin, all sharp angles and points where the lean muscle of a young boy had once been. His cheeks looked hollow and held a waxy sheen. His eyes were sunken into his face and seemed like they were veiled by a piece of wavy glass. Everything about him cried sick. He was, in fact, going to die. Sooner rather than later, Dean was unpleasantly reminded as he glanced to the beanie that covered what had once been dark curls. The lump in his throat that had appeared months ago when Castiel was first diagnosed grew, choking him. But he wouldn't leave. He knew that Castiel only had time left. No miracle cures would help him, so the few hours that he was awake, Dean was by his side.

Dean cleared his throat and looked back at Castiel. The frown told him that the answer was unsatisfactory. He shifted his weight and said, "Well, I guess you go back to when you weren't sick and just relive the best moments. Y'know, like some sort of slideshow." _You disappear. Everyone forgets you eventually. Except the people who really knew you. God knows we couldn't._

"So I will just relive it all?"

Dean smiled softly. "Nah, that'd be boring. Just the really good parts, Castiel's greatest hits."

"Like when we built the fort?" Castiel asked.

"Yeah or when we used to pretend we were pirates on the playground."

"When you tried to convince me that we should run away to Hogwarts."

"Going to the creek every day that summer."

"Telling me that Jedi were coming to kidnap me and make me Darth Vader."

"Hey, you believed it! But," Dean paused, looking down, "yeah. All of those. Cas and Dean's Greatest Hits." _I'd rather relive them with you alive_.

"What about you?"

"Huh?" Dean glanced at him.

"What will you do when I'm gone?"

This was the part where Dean stopped, usually. The idea of going to school without his best friend, after eight years, seemed impossible and cruel. Instead, he heard himself say, "My dad will probably make me go to school or something."

"You know I didn't just mean when summer's over."

"Worst summer ever." Dean smiled, kind of. Castiel's face remained stoic besides the tightening at the corners of his eyes. When had he gotten older? He was supposed to be 16 with Dean, but had aged hundreds of years with the disease.

"I'm sorry," Castiel finally said miserably. Dean stared at him as the blue eyes filled with tears. He forced himself off the wall to Castiel's side and took his hand.

"This is not your fault," he whispered ferociously. Dean could feel himself cracking, the layers of skin over the ice in his blood pulling away as the first tear fell from his best friend's eye. "It's not," he repeated, ignoring the crack in his voice. Dean didn't want this conversation to happen, now or ever. If this conversation happened, then so did everything else. Castiel, Cas, his Cas would die and he'd have to go on and act normal and make new friends and go to college and have a rest of his life all the while knowing that Castiel didn't get one. And one day, he'd wake up and his first thought wouldn't be that his best friend wouldn't say hello to him that day. One day, he would be busy and not think of Castiel at all. Then a week, then longer, then Castiel wouldn't exist. Not to him. He wouldn't visit the grave, preferring to go on a date with some nameless, faceless girl. He'd lose Cas in every sense of the word. He wouldn't want to shut out the world on November 4 because he wouldn't remember that every November 4, they had gone to the fort and had a party with snitched snacks and some Led Zeppelin in the radio to celebrate Cas' birthday. Maybe on the day, that awful, terrible day that had yet to come, he'd think about the boy he knew in high school that died too young, but no chick flick moments would come from it. Castiel was the only one he would ever have a chick flick moment for and it wouldn't happen.

"I hate this," Castiel whispered, hands clenched pathetically at his sides while Dean held one in his own. He followed a tear as it dragged down Dean's face, but said nothing. "I hate this waiting. Making you and my mom and everyone else just wait for me to drop." Dean began to shake his head pathetically, but Castiel continued, emotion beginning to build in his throat. "And I'm just waiting too. It's going to happen, I'm dying, we all know that, but why am I waiting?" He was yelling, angry at everything, life more than any other, while Dean sat there, letting fat drops fall down his cheeks as he stroked his thumbs across the hand he held. "If I have to die, why can't it just hurry up? Why not today? Why not six months ago? Why play around like this?" Castiel turned his glare from the wall that held the wipe-off board with his information, ready to be cleaned at the moment his body cooled, towards Dean. "You're crying," he realized, letting his harsh glare fall to misery again. "I'm the fucking disease."

Neither spoke for a long time. They just stared at each other, a silent agreement to ignore the tears leaking from the other, gripping hands for strength. The steady hum of machinery filled the room while hospital chaos echoed in the hall. Breaths were quiet and the air was heavy with regret and the steady thud of impending loss.

"I'm sorry."

"You shouldn't be."

"But I am."

"Then I forgive you." Dean looks down. "I'll always forgive you. I'll never forgive your body."

"Me neither. I forgive you."

"Thank you."

"Dean?"

"Yeah?"

"We're rotting." They meet eyes again, Dean waiting for Castiel to explain. He doesn't.

"You and me?"

"Me. And us. And the world. And everyone as a whole and an individual and a portion. We're all rotting until we die and rotting away our friends and family and rotting everyone we love with just our presence and our existence. We're all cancer." He gripped Dean's hand harder, icy fingers slipping through Dean's.

"You're not."

"I am. I'm killing you. Just like you're killing me. I just happen to be murder, while you're hypothermia." Dean could see the delirium beginning to set in, he wasn't thinking properly, probably falling asleep as he spoke. "I'm killing you with my being and my dying because you're here, too afraid you won't get to say goodbye. But you should've said it months ago because I'm sucking your life force for myself. I'm stealing your life because I'm hurting you just by being alive while I'm failing. Our friendship is killing you. And you're killing me. Because I know I should just die, let it be over because there's no other exit but giving in, but I can't. Because my mom's got Anna and Michael. She'll be okay and looked after. And you've got Sam so you'll be okay. But I can't let go because the idea of falling asleep without seeing you again hurts and I don't want to. Because by living, I get what I want and it numbs the hurt, but I'm dying more than I would if I just died. It could've been peaceful if I had given up. But now I'm numb and falling slowly, so everything will have to fail to drag me away. I'm a murderer, and you're hypothermia. Two killers, just by existence."

"Cas," Dean croaked. His throat was raw, chest heaving because he hated seeing this. Castiel falling apart in front of him. But Castiel was right, he didn't want to have the opportunity pass when he could say goodbye.

"Goddammit, Dean. Dying is harder than living when you're around." Castiel put one of his hands onto Dean's cheek heavily. Dean leaned in without thinking. Why the fuck should he think when everything that mattered was falling to pieces in his lap?

"I'm sorry. I'm sorry, Cas, I'm so sorry. I can't – so sorry, so fucking sorry." Dean could feel everything breaking: heart, mind, bones, life. Everything was dying with Castiel and all he could do was cry on the shoulder of a boy facing death. On a boy who thought he was poison.

"I'm not. I'll always stay for you." Castiel was mumbling, fighting a losing battle with fatigue. "You just gotta tell me what you want." His eyes were blinking and taking longer and longer to open.

Dean grinded out, "Stay. Please, Cas, don't go. Stay, please, for me."

Cas turned his face up, where Dean was leaning over the railing of the bed. "Course I'll stay. I'll be bored without you when I'm dead."

The breath on his face made Dean's heart clench. He was still alive, still breathing. They were almost nose to nose, foreheads leaning against each other, hands still wrapped together. They were comforting each other and damn it if Dean wouldn't hold up his end of the deal. Besides, how bad could the consequences really be at this point?

Dean pushed himself forward until their faces were a hair's breadth away. Their eyes were closed, but Dean waited, waited for Cas to say no or back away. But he didn't. They stayed there for a moment before Castiel finally, finally closed the infinitesimal gap between them. It was chapped lips and clumsy movements and bumping noses. There was nothing romantic or sensual about the kiss itself, salty tears and grief blurring the too late feelings. But it was everything they could have and everything Dean had wanted and Castiel needed. There wouldn't be time later for something better. Because Castiel was falling, fast, and the last chance was far gone. This was about what should've been, what they both wished desperately had been, but wasn't. It wasn't fair. But they both knew that. Life had taught them that lesson quite thoroughly.

They separated and Castiel gripped Dean's hand once before his body finally took him away into unconsciousness. Dean kissed his best friend's bony knuckles, smoothed his beanie across his forehead and stood up to go home, ignoring the fact that his legs felt like they would collapse. He walked stiffly out the door and away from where his best friend slept so peacefully, like he was already dead.

Three weeks later, Castiel Novak died in his home. His mother called Dean to tell him that Castiel was asking for him. He was there when Castiel had finally let go, with one final squeeze of Dean's hand. Dean got to say goodbye. But it had felt empty. Like every letter meant nothing in the word because how could you really say goodbye. There had been no relief like the hospital counselor had promised. No thoughts that Castiel was in a better place. It was purely pain and grief and sorrow. Ms. Novak had leaned on his shoulder and sobbed while Dean stood there, one hand on her back as he grieved with the woman he had considered his mother, one still clutching Castiel's hand.

He went to the funeral. The suit was too long in the arms and too tight in the neck. The tie was stupid, the church too quiet, the burial too bright for the worst day in his life. It was sunny. Birds sang. Squirrels chased each other. One was run over by a car passing the cemetery.

The graduation of Lawrence High School included an Ash Greer, a Jo Harvelle, a Gabriel Milton, and a Dean Winchester among the many other names. It did not include a Castiel Novak.

When he left for college, it was for good. He moved to California and attended UC in Oakland. He paid for Sam to come visit him every couple of months by working as a waiter in a bar on night shifts. At Christmas, he invited his dad and Sammy to come and stay at his apartment. His dad took the bedroom, Sam the couch, and Dean happily slept on the floor. No one ever argued for him to visit Kansas. Every November 4, he took the day off and went hiking. Every July 28, he sent flowers to Ms. Novak and got drunk. Those nights would always end with him alone in his apartment, screaming at Castiel for dying without him. For not having the common fucking decency to take him with him or give him a path to follow when it was past the point he could handle.

It was August 3, a day that was hotter than hell, and the air clung around the inhabitants. Dean was bringing home a bottle of liquor from the corner shop, too hot to go to a bar, and preparing for what had become a week-long ritual of drinking himself into a stupor until he passed out on his couch. He was dragging himself up the stairs with three days of scruff and some UC shirt when he bumped into the girl in the apartment below him.

It was December 15 when Dean got married and tried not to think about the fact that Castiel wasn't there. Dean was sobered up by then, under Lisa's orders, and happy most of the time. He never stopped thinking about Castiel.

Dean died when he was 38 in some car crash. They put his picture in the paper and said that he was survived by his wife and two children, Ben, aged 12, and Angel, aged 9. It told of how he was driving home from work when a drunk driver hit him on the freeway. It told where and when the service would be held.

The newspaper never said that he had been alive seconds after his car had flipped, crushing his means of escape and trapping him to die from his crushed chest and head trauma. It never mentioned that in those last seconds, he had felt someone squeeze his hand and whisper to him that it was okay, that he would be alright now, and show him what path to take as his body failed.


End file.
